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Techstination contains a wide assortment of reviews and
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The Next Frontier for Flat Panel Screens

Techstination feature for Tuesday, April 6, 2004

The next frontier for flat panel screens. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Consumers have been buying more and more flat LCD screens. IDC forecasts sales this year will jump 56 percent. But one market that's been tough for LCDs to crack…is the one made up of hard core gamers. LCD screens typically take a lot longer to refresh than old fashioned CRT monitors…and that means a lot to game players. Samsung is hoping to change some minds with the SyncMaster 172X. Product manager Monica Islas says…the response time of 12 milliseconds could win some game players over to the LCD screen…

"Basically the benefit to a consumer using a fast response time is any type of motion, video or video streaming or gaming or things of that nature that really have motion with it…allows for a very nice image without having the ghosting or the traction behind it."

The 17 inch screen has a narrow silver bezel around the edges…giving it a stylish appearance. And it includes Samsung's MagicTune technology…which lets you access the screen controls through PC software…

"The main benefit from that is you can actually set it up. It has a wizard that will walk you through color calibrating your display, so you have the most optimized image. And by doing that you can actually save the profile. It also allows you to save multiple profiles."

So the monitor can adjust itself for different users automatically. The SyncMaster 172X sells for about 600 dollars. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.